Italy Vacation Specialists IVS

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Our story begins in 2003 in the region of Calabria, which is a region in Southern Italy. If you think of Italy as a boot, this region would be the toe of the boot - the deep south, otherwise known in Italy as the land of the 'Mezzogiorno." This is the region where the owner of the company moved to, to start teaching English in the town of Praia a Mare and it's quite an incredible story of what happened after that because it is a love story and a testament to the passion for Italy that we all share.

In 2003, Jesse Andrews an English & Environmental studies background with an MBA, graduated from McGill University in Montreal QC, Canada. With no money, but a strong desire to travel to Italy, she accepted a position through the university to teach English in a school in a small sea-side town of Praia a Mare, At that time, she could not find any information about the town. All she knew was that it was located on the sea-side and that there were about 5000 people that lived there.

The little information she could find about Calabria, also made her very nervous because there was at that time a few warnings about the area. She also contacted the Italian tourism board, but nobody she contacted knew anything, yet she had a great job offer to teach English, an apartment and a return ticket home in September, so on July 1s 2003 she got on a plane in Montreal and flew to Rome where she began her descent, about 6 hours south of Rome to the town where she would be working for the rest of the summer. She never looked back on her decision.

When she arrived in Rome and took the train south to Calabria it was late at night by the time she arrived and so it wasn't until morning when she woke up that she saw her apartment was looking out over the Mediterranean sea and there was a fantastically long stretch of beach, looking out towards Maratea. She found what she considered paradise.

Over the course of the summer, Jesse's Italian improved and she began to know many people in the community there. She also met a man she fell in love with, Giuseppe LaScaleia who helped Jesse in many ways to discover the region of Calabria over the next 4 years and in the fall, he introduced her to the mayor of the town, Antonio Pratico and his assistant Rosa Grisolia, who Jesse to this day still believes to be angels in her life because they encouraged her to write and to start the business of documenting the history and photographing the places in the south which very few people even to this day travel to.